Orkney Photos

by mikka




Woefully out of order and incomplete, but here are a few photos from Orkney - the first, above, of a ruined croft house, is my favorite; as bus access to historical sites is mostly shut down in the off-season, I signed up for a bus tour of the Orkney Mainland, which hit way more sites than I had expected to see and which was run by incredibly nice people. I was the last to be dropped off afterwards, and the guy stopped on top of this hill as the sun was beginning to set, so, maybe everyone else who visits Orkney has this same photo but looking at it now I still can't believe I actually got to be there (on such a beautiful day, no less).



I took a lot of photos of the two stone circles we saw (the Stenness Stones and the Ring of Brodgar), especially since I masochistically biked to them the day after the tour, but photos of rocks aren't particularly interesting (and also I'm being too lazy to sort through all the photos I took to find the most representative one); there were a bride and groom being photographed at the Ring of Brodgar though, which all things considered is a pretty awesome place to be photographed for your wedding.



Stones in Loch Harray, which I only noticed because I was painfully cycling past them.



Not pictured: dirty, dirty Viking thoughts.

Maes Howe was my favorite neolithic site and I wish I could better show you what it looked like inside; to enter you have to crouch to almost half your hight and crawl down a long passageway, at which point you emerge into a beehive shaped tomb that is older than the pyramids and covered in grafitti left by Viking raiders, which range from "The man who is the most skilled at carving runes carved these runes" to "Thorni fucked; Helgi carved." I love Vikings.



incoming tide.

This was taken halfway across a slippery, seaweed coated walk to the tidal island of Birsay, which is home to the remains of a Viking settlement (apparently the Vikings had a spa? Who knew.)



hey look, more livestock!


It's lateish (though I realize these postings are still timed for New York time, I think?) so I'm going to turn in now and tomorrow try and head to Canterbury like a good English major, but I have lots more Orkney photos and still haven't even written about the great day I had in which I managed to combine ruins, rain AND islands, and get soaking wet and mocked by livestock, so, more to come, soonish.